Abstract
The paper examines the problem of persuasion from a structuralist perspective. Since advertising is a highly competitive system of communication, which draws heavily on mechanisms of persuasion, it is ideally suited both to test and illustrate the case that structuralism makes.
Following a certain procedure, any viable system of advertising campaigns can be decoded into a binary structure of an archetypal nature. Moreover, all the binary structures thus obtained, are themselves inter-related to form a first and tentative approximation of the grand structure of all advertising. This is the structure of the structures.
It has been shown before, that structures can only be decoded from a complete system of communication. Similarly, it has been maintained, that the existence of the structures is essential to the understanding of the message. Since advertising is a sequential phenomenon, it follows that a campaign's power of persuasion is determined by the facility of the code. The more economical, clear and precise the structural definition, the higher is the level of effective communication.
Second, at any point in time, the underlying structure of a competitive product field is determined by all the campaigns which are active in its sphere. But in mature fields the controlling archetype has already been established in the course of the history of the product field. A new campaign merely represents it in a new guise. In this sense the archetype precedes any new manifestation of it. Therefore, the effectivity of each new campaign is determined by its fidelity to the positive pole of the binary pair which constitutes its underlying structure.
Finally, the power of persuasion is influenced by the nature of the archetype itself. In each product group, the rank order of effectivity can be established on the basis of empirical examination.
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